Patron saint of abuse victims, invoked for conversion of family members and loved ones, difficult marriages and disappointing children.

FEAST DAY 3rd MAY (Traditional calendar)

All mothers can relate to St Monica. Even if we don’t have a wayward son who says, “Lord make me chaste, but not yet”, (Confessions 8,7), we can understand her desperate concern for her son’s moral and spiritual well-being.

She was a Berber woman, a devout Catholic, born in 331 AD and married to a pagan man, Patricius, who was abusive and materialistic. When Augustine was a young child, he became ill to the point of near death and St Monica managed to persuade her husband to allow his baptism into the Catholic faith. Augustine, however, grew into a wayward young man, stealing and cheating and indulging in sexual hedonism. He journeyed to Carthage, studied law and rhetoric, and…